


The Recruitment Of V1P3R

by LiulfrLokison



Series: The Snake Handler [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Backstory, False Alliances, Foreshadowing, Human Winter Soldier, Mentions of Project INSIGHT, Must Destroy The Chair, Nicknames, Red Coat Dramatics, RumlowHate, Superior Dante, protective!Dante
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-26
Updated: 2016-09-26
Packaged: 2018-08-17 08:31:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8137315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LiulfrLokison/pseuds/LiulfrLokison
Summary: V1P3R was a myth throughout HYDRA.
  
  Some agents thought he was a rumour made up by the higher-ups to scare them.
  
  But some people knew that V1P3R was no myth, and he walked amongst them.
  
  Very few agents knew who he was, and many of those agents knew to never make themselves the target of the man’s ire.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Third installment in 'The Snake Handler', giving a few of how the actual HYDRA goons think of Dante, and a little Rumlow hate cause he is an asshole (in my brain). And protective!Dante rears its head on the subject of the chair.

V1P3R had been a rumour on the internet at first, a hacker with the name of a snake. Like any other hacker, HYDRA kept an eye on this individual as an investment, was it worth recruiting them?

They already had many hackers under their employment, most of whom had been tracked down and forced into contracts. The smarter hackers eventually caught on and offered their services to HYDRA, not wishing to be hunted down and trapped like rats in a cage. Some of them blatantly stated they just needed the money and didn’t care who they got employed by as long as they had were paid at the end of the day. 

Overtime, V1P3R had become a household name among their hackers, the braver ones asking why they didn’t have the infamous V1P3R under their thumb, HYDRA found them, so why couldn’t they find V1P3R?

HYDRA of course wished to hire V1P3R after the hacker wormed they way into SHIELD systems, and got alarming close to finding HYDRA’s files. 

They began their hunt in earnest, but their efforts bared no fruit. 

V1P3R was a slippery serpent, covering their tracks so efficiently that HYDRA could barely catch the hacker even when they were in the act of browsing through top secret government files. 

HYDRA wasn’t sure if V1P3R had even noticed they were being hunted down, there was no change to their routine and they continued to hack into every government security system just for kicks. 

Then out of the blue, V1P3R went dark. 

For a whole month the hacker never made a post, none of their alerts went off, just a complete blackout. 

The hackers went nuts, wondering why V1P3R had gone into blackout mode, HYDRA ran their own hackers ragged trying to find out when V1P3R went offline, they could not afford to lose their investment. 

And as suddenly as V1P3R went into blackout mode, they appeared again. 

But this time, they were not behind a computer screen.

V1P3R showed up in person. 

-o0o-

V1P3R’s integration into HYDRA was unlike any other agent’s initiation into the terrorist organisation. 

V1P3R revealed next to nothing of his personal information, and what their hackers could hunt down was disappointingly little. 

All they knew about V1P3R was that his name was Dante Pendragon, and that he had a slight albino gene in his DNA that gave him his ivory hair and single red eye. 

They didn’t know his age, his education, his ethnicity, his background, his parents . . .

Nothing. 

Once they let him have access to a computer, the man completely demolished their security system and rebuilt it from scratch, awing all the IT technicians with his skill and speed. 

But when they found out his interests in mechanics, and after a month of observing him and his motives, they decided it would be beneficial to introduce V1P3R to the Winter Soldier. The last technician to work on the Assets arm had been careless, thinking the assassin was completely immobile and had suffered dearly for his mistake. 

The meeting between the two had gone, far more differently than they expected. 

The Asset had flown into a rage after being taken out of cyrofreeze and the guards had quickly moved to detain the Winter Soldier, while his movements were still hindered from three weeks in containment. But the Asset was usually contained for longer periods of times and regained the use of his limbs far quicker than they could contain him. 

The agents were all defeated in a matter of minutes, and V1P3R was the only operative left standing in the room. 

However, the Asset did nothing but stare at the hacker in bewilderment, confused by this new agent who did nothing but stare back with a look of absolute calm on his face. 

Somehow that translated to the Asset that this was his new handler. 

And there wasn’t anything HYDRA could do to change his mind. 

-o0o-

Four years later and V1P3R was still a well spread rumour throughout HYDRA. All the IT technicians knew that the hacker was under HYDRA’s employment, but had never met the man. The only IT techies that met him were the ones now part of his exclusive team. All of the ones chosen were hackers that had been hunted down, either being forced at gunpoint to sign a contract, or the smarter ones who knew when to compromise. 

Dante had found each and every one of them that hated HYDRA, and swept them under his wing. 

But that was something only they knew, all the other hackers had eventually come to understand HYDRA’s motives and began to agree with them. 

The few guards that worked with the IT team were also those who harboured a hatred for HYDRA, but had been unfortunate enough to join HYDRA without realising the organisations true intentions until it was too late, and were still able to hold firm to their morals. 

All the others had become HYDRA’s goons. 

In the first six months after the Snakes Nest had formed, the tech teams were all jealous of the few hackers that Dante had specially chosen and quickly became jealous of them, which lead to minor conflicts but had never caused serious injury. When the harassment had reached physical levels, Dante had gathered all of the tech teams and had warned them that if it continued, he would walk out of HYDRA and dump all their secrets onto the internet. 

If they left his team alone, then they had nothing to fear. 

The glare on his face had caused one of the weaker willed technicians to faint, and it didn’t help that the menacing HYDRA symbol behind him made him a whole lot scarier. 

Things settled down after that, and HYDRA noted down that Dante could glare men down into submission, a man with a strong will. Perhaps that was why the Winter Soldier thought Dante was his new handler?

HYDRA gave Dante a bit more free reign around the bases, the more freedom he had the more results he produced, which benefited HYDRA well. 

However, when Dante first encountered the Chair, things quickly went sour. 

_Isaac Hyberts had seen many things during his time in HYDRA, and was privileged enough to be part of the team involved with the Chair, the machine that wiped the Winter Soldier’s memories in order to keep him compliant._

_Today was the first time he met the infamous V1P3R, the Winter Soldier’s newest handler, who had quite the knack for technology. The Assets metal prosthetic was better than ever after the handler had been given time to tinker with it._

_Like many of the team, he had been in awe when the man had first walked in, he had this air of superiority and intelligence about him, you could tell this was not a man you would want to mess with._

_The Winter Soldier was the man’s shadow, and refused to leave his handler’s side._

_The Asset had returned from a mission, and so was scheduled for the Chair, but it had taken some time to bring the assassin in. They had expected the Soldier to comply with the procedure as usual, but instead the Asset stayed firm next to V1P3R, he wouldn’t even move an inch._

_The hacker’s face was serenely calm, his eyes shut and a smile on his face._

_None of them could move, transfixed by this man who strode forward with a determined air._

_When the tall man snatched the nearest technician up by the front of his shirt, holding the terrified man aloft, Isaac could practically smell the man’s rage._

_V1P3R’s voice contradicted his actions, asking with a peaceful tone what the Chair actually was._

_When the technician babbled out its functions, Isaac and all the other technicians had begun to edge away and reach for the panic button. It was lucky that Isaac was near a table, diving behind it when V1P3R threw the technician into a wall, Isaac felt the man’s lab coat brush against his arm as he flew over his head._

_Several agents swarmed through the doors, most of them being STRIKE team agents, quickly moving to restrain V1P3R who was the perfect picture of the devil. The Winter Soldier shifted to intercept the agents, but V1P3R was there before the assassin could even blink._

_Rumlow was on the ground a second later, grunting in pain as V1P3R slammed the man’s face into the floor, digging a knee into the STRIKE team leaders back and his voice was dripping with utter poison._

_“If you ever use that vile machine on him again, I will tear this place down brick by brick. And that is a promise.”_

_The Winter Soldier looked surprised at this, but his blank expression filtered over it too fast for Isaac to confirm if he had seen the assassin show any emotion._

_His movement caught the eye of the hacker, and when Isaac looked back, he found himself caught in that mis – matched gaze._

_The very blood in his veins froze, and he felt his breath stop._

_Isaac fainted dead away, having learned one thing in mind from this experience._

_V1P3R had that name for a reason._

_He had the eyes of a killer._

After that incident, the Chair was put away in storage, and the few agents that had the clearance to know about the incident, began to fear Dante once Isaac spread the word. Soon enough anyone who had clearance to know about the Winter Soldier all fled when Dante entered a room, and it caused so much of a racket that the higher – ups built Dante a separate building so that it wouldn’t cause so much trouble, as well as have the lower agents curiosity perked. 

Dante became a ghost around HYDRA, and very few still remembered how dangerous the man was. 

Rumlow’s grudge for losing the position of the Soldier’s handler became full out hatred, but the man was smart enough to not confront Dante in person, and he started to harass the Winter Soldier whenever he could get the assassin alone (which wasn’t very often). 

The higher – ups learned that if you placed both Rumlow and Dante in the same room, the STRIKE leader would be on his best behaviour, because Dante had no problem with fighting Rumlow in broad daylight, he enjoyed publicly humiliating the man.

But to those who didn’t know who Dante really was, they saw the man as a techie who had a flair for the dramatics. The staff in the lobby only knew him to be one of the techies who always carried coffee in the mornings, left the building for lunch and came back loaded with food. They didn’t know his name, so the staff called him by the nickname ‘White Genesis’. 

Only Reno caught onto the nickname for what it really was, the person who had come up with the nickname was a fellow Final Fantasy Seven fan, who thought the red coat and Dante’s personality was similar to Genesis Rhapsodos. And so that person called him the ‘White Genesis’ and it caught on. 

Everyone knew who the White Genesis was around the base, a man who wore a red coat and had white hair, a man who had no problem arguing with higher ups and always carried a bag of lollies around (if Dante handed out a few to those around the base who were trying to quit smoking, nobody made a comment about it). 

Dante so happened to be known by this nickname by the people in SHIELD as well (he technically was a SHIELD agent with an alliance to HYDRA), and he may or may not have made friends with a few agents in the main control room. He enjoyed showing up to scare the crap out of Rumlow as well, who was miffed when Dante gave him a cheery wave while chatting with some random SHIELD agents around the water coolers. 

Dante regularly messed with his records so that it did look like he was there for some work in the SHIELD bases during those occasions, but always made sure to avoid Director Fury or those who reported directly to the man, and so far he had never caught the one – eyed man’s attention. 

But Dante knew it was all a matter of time before HYDRA got too cocky and would reveal themselves to the world. 

Judging by the looks of this Project INSIGHT, that time would be coming . . .

Very . . .

Very . . .

Soon. 

And when that day came, Dante would have to show where his true colours lied. 

(And if anyone dared to touch his team, they would learn exactly what the fires of hell felt like). 

-o0o-

**Author's Note:**

> It was annoying because this one was stuck on my computer for ages but I had to work on my essay and so I am so relieved to have finally posted this one up. I've been working on a little Tony Dante interaction, which will be the next installment of the series and possibly have a couple of chapters (it doesn't want to be a oneshot and will also give some backstory to how Dante knows Tony). Also foreshadowing of Project INSIGHT! I haven't started to work on that one, but I have several ideas for how Dante's involvement with Winter will change how things go. That is certainly going to be several chapters long, and I can't wait to get started, but of course, tests are in the way . . . So it may be some time before I upload the next installment when I get around to it. 
> 
> Hope you enjoyed, and let me know what you thought!
> 
> LiulfrLokison out! :3


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